Everything Burns
by sabregirl2
Summary: What really happened in Joker's past? Did he actually have one bad day, or was it more than that? PLZ R&R!
1. Chapter 1

The Joker: Truth About the World

The difference between humor and tragedy is that humor is when it happens to someone else.

The difference between genius and insanity is that genius has its limits.

There are things in this world that no matter how hard you try, you can't change. Like people. Where do they get off telling people they can change? People don't change. Ideas change. Eb and flow, eb and flow, ideas. Ideas form, shift, break, rebuild the whole twenty eight and a half yards. Now, it's a whole 'nother story when a man becomes the idea. Then, like a god, he's worshipped, watched, obsessed over. See, people are… fickle. That's all they are. So easily swayed to what others like of them, easily swayed over... money… love… Ideas. Like Santa Clause. Who the hell came up with that jolly, fat freak? I am a psycho, by nature, I mean really, but who the hell decided HE was a good idea? But now, his jolly fat legend is all over the world. People were swayed to believe in something that wasn't even real because some dumb-potatoes-for-brains decided one day that the world needed to be a better place. Better place meaning greedy, vain, poisonous little cockroaches called humans. I mean, I don't aspire to acquire the things of this world. I am a simple man. I like the everyday comforts of a jagged knife here and there, some killing every once and a while, maybe blowing up a couple orphanages a year. Nobody will ever miss those nasty little children any way. Oh, and a pony. From Santa Clause. Very simple. I have no… hidden motives. No alibi. No name. People are schemers. I, myself, am a very dedicated employee of chaos. An agent you might call me. I have no plan. Just do my job. And do you want to know what my job is? Hmm? Well, since you're insisting, I'll tell you. I flip around those schemers plans to benefit myself. Well, I wouldn't say I'm really benefitting myself. I just love my job. I do violence and killing and occasionally some mass murdering every once in a while. Your willingness to do violence is very different than mine. You do violence willingly when you have to. I do violence just for fun. I love my job, you see. I love it, I love it. Everything happens for a reason. Like me, for instance. The unusual circumstances in my case have shaped me into what I've become today. I haven't decided if my story was a good one or not yet. Not good, but a story. I not only want comfort, knives, killing, and a pony. I want what every man wants. I want to be…heard. I want to tell this story to someone who will listen before I waste in this man-hole Asylum with flying rats in the basement trying to keep all of us in here. I want you, my faithful little follower, to know my story and know why I did the things that I have done and the things that I will do. Here goes. Cheers.

\m/.\m/

I guess we can start where it all began. You see, my father was…a drunk. And a fiend.

"Come on, woman! Give me my son."

"You're drunk, Jacob! Don't come near him with that bottle!"

"Afraid I'll light you on fire like I did the kid down the street?" He motioned towards the small boy- that's me!- in her arms. I was just a wee little thing back then, but I heard this from the other witnesses in the room. The now dead Dr. Durham and the nice feeble Spanish lady saying useless prayers in the corner are now pushing up daisies, ladies and gentlemen.

"Hand me my son, woman." My father managed the best throaty growly sound he could, I guess. I could picture it. But then, he jerked me out of mum's arms, ripped her hair out and called her a bad name. I don't like to repeat it. Too…..foul, not at all what I would like to picture my mother as. I was probably screaming my bulbous alien head off at that time. I don't know. I could be making that up. I know at one point that I was choking on a misplaced umbilical cord around my throat. How's that for an entrance?

I think he cooed over me for a minute before getting tired of holding me in his drunken state. He tossed me to the doctor to get all my shots. Rabies, I guess. How would that affect me now, if I had rabies with all this crap? Like Cannibal Joker. What a story that would make. Thankfully, the good doctor caught me before I fell to the nasty floor. That would've been icky. No. I got my shots. I was healthy. 'Was' being the operative word. I mean look at me now! Anyway, my mother was too much of a coward to stand up to my father. I never want to be like my mother.

That was my entrance. Let's fast forward just a little. Next time you picture me, I'll be five years old. Up until this point in my life, I was…unkempt, I guess you could say. No one but us and the doc and the dead Spanish lady knew about me, and father was determined to keep it that way. He went to great lengths to make sure no one knew about me. I didn't even see the outside until I was four. Maybe it was inhaling all the radon coming up from our basement crawlspace that did me in. All it takes is one bad day. Any man could have one really bad day and end up just like me. You know. Nuts.

My dear old dad was taking me off to learn the trade. Mechanics. Of what, you ask? Well, to me it didn't matter. I just wanted to be with dad, make him proud. I can't help thinking if he could see me now, would he be proud? I guess not. That'd be crazy. He took me to a shop outside of the town we lived in, put me in the back of the store and just kind of… left me. I remember messing around with some kind of flammable substance and blowing off my eyebrows. My first explosion. That was the day that I decided what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. A Navy Seal.

That was what I decided. Why? Why not? Who wouldn't like to do whatever it is that those guys do. With all due respect to those individuals, of course. It's not easy doing whatever it is that you guys do.

I learned about the Navy when my father was talking to a co-worker about smuggling drugs across the Pacific. You know, the big one. At the time, I just thought it sounded cool. Hunting the kind of fiend my father was. I hated my father.

So after that, I didn't want to work on cars and mess around with explody things at the shop. Instead, I waited outside at the park and tricked people. Yeah. I was one of those guys who scammed and stole your money. But I didn't do it for the money. Nope, I did not. I did it…for the fun. That's where I first killed a man. I was doing a trick, my favorite trick actually, with a pencil. I had it set up right and ready for the action when along come a man. He was…big. Huge man with…receding hairlines and big…muscles. Very scary guy to a five year old. He came up to my little stand I had set up and asked me to show him a trick. I did the pencil trick. He laughed at me. "That's not a trick! You've got it in your pocket!"

I emptied my pockets. A couple of pennies and a fork. That's when his smile faded.

"Think you're smart?" he asked.

I said, "Only smarter than a fool like you."

He got very angry indeed. So he spat at me. "Freak."

Now I don't like that word. It's what my father called me when he was drunk. So I said, "All right. You want to see a trick? Fine."

I sat the fork up on the tip. Balancing a fork is no easy process, people. I took a minute to set it up and said, "I think you'll like this one, sir."

I stood beside the table. "Now look at it closely. Closer. There you go." Then I took my hand, wrapped it around his thick neck, and shoved his face onto the fork. I wasn't that strong, but you could imagine how easy the fork went right through his eye. I chuckled to the corpse. "Crazy fork-eye."

There were people standing around staring, some on cellular devices attached to ears, most people just staring at the freaky blond kid that just killed a man almost five times his size and weight. I did the only thing I could think of to do. "Want to see a trick?" And I popped the fork out from the man's eye socket and set it on the table. The funniest thing was, the eyeball itself had come out on the tip of the fork, sitting straight up on the table. A little girl screamed. People scrambled. You know how they are. Like cockroaches or rats. Send one into a panic and it all goes downhill from there.

I don't really know what happened after that. I heard sirens and ran. People tried to stop me, but I was definitely a fighter even back then. I ran to the only place I knew of to go. The park. I hid behind a slide, a really big one that turned out to be where I hid for hours until I thought the coast was clear. Then, like any scared boy of that age, I ran home. You could only imagine the scene there. It was chaotic.

"Where have you been?" My father exploded as soon as I walked in the room. I didn't say anything. I knew it wouldn't help anything, so I just…waited. He didn't like that anymore than I did just standing there. "Answer me you little freak!" He lunged towards me, bottle of bourbon in one hand, tight fist with the other, red faced and very, very drunk. Mother waited in the corner. I knew she was too afraid of my father to do anything. She was weak, she knew it, he knew, he used it against her. Never let them see you cry, and she'd crumbled. She watched pitifully from the side as he grabbed my shoulders and hurled me across the room. We didn't have a very big place, in fact, it was very small, so even five feet was all the space I got before crashing into a picture of us at the circus.

"Jacob, please, leave him alone."

My father didn't like that at all. "Do you want to tell me what a bad father I am? I know how to punish my son, woman."

My head was bleeding from a shallow cut over my left eye and my chin was bruising against the floor. I tried to stand up. My ankle went out from under me and I fell back down, embarrassed and hurt. I looked up and father had his face pressed against the bottle in his hand and in one quick motion, dumped it on Mother. I saw a flicker of fire before he acted on his thoughts. The whole room was filled with lights and I heard a shriek. A flaming mass ran towards me, towards the back door, running out into the night, muffled only by the sound of father's sick laughter beside me. "Your lesson for tonight, son," he slurred. "Everything burns."

\m/.\m/

When I was fourteen, I met a little boy. He was my first…'friend' I guess you could say. Well, one night, I was showing him how to make a pipe bomb. My father had shown me how and I was trying to impress my only friend, you know how kids are. I finished constructing the…mechanism and he said, "Why don't we use it?"

Wasn't that supposed to be my suggestion? I know you were wondering. Well, since I was busy thinking, 'why isn't this thing exploding already? I just activated it.' I couldn't very much say anything at that time. I was thinking, 'it must be a dud.' But my friend, on the other hand spoke for me. He took the words right out of my mouth. It really cheesed me off. Normally, I eviscerate people for that, but he was a friend. You don't give up the first friend you have because you were too busy wondering why people weren't scraping you off walls yet. I let it go, just that once and said, "Great idea. It might not work, though. If it had, we'd be grease spots all over the walls by now."

He didn't like that idea. He took off running. I didn't see the point of his reaction at the time. Since the bomb was a bust, I threw it out the open window and watched it sail through the air and crash into the building beside me. It turns out, that's all I really needed to get the thing going. The building went up in smoke and flame. The structure collapsed within seconds and all the screaming people in it burned up. I know what you're thinking again, I'm getting really good at this. Who were the people? Well, I was wondering the same thing. I turned my body to walk out into the daylight, and what do you know it, a sign stared at me from the front yards of the burning building. 'Gotham City Children's Home'. And that's how I performed my first act of mass murder. No one survived the accident. I didn't report it. I didn't get caught. The products I used in making the bomb were everyday household things, stuff someone could get anywhere. A day later, after the incident, I searched for my flighty friend. I learned he had been hospitalized by the blast and that he was in the ICU with an iron lung. Ouch. I wasn't sorry. Maybe if it had killed him, I would've indefinitely gotten away with murder. So that night, I snuck in and switched his meds. He died the next day, with his insides liquefying. So much for friends. I stayed clear of people after that.

By fifteen, I had my first job as…a stand-up comedian. Yeah, laugh it up. It's okay. I wasn't very good. People didn't find me very funny. I was doing a show at this teen club, sixteen and up, but I had a fake ID. Most kids did if you knew who to talk to. I was in the middle of a joke at the time and I needed an assistant.

I had called a fine football player from the audience. He had been goaded into going up there by his huge, steroid-packed, football star peers. He stepped up there, huge and confident. He said, "All right, get on with it, freak."

"I'm sorry?" He laughed while I watched him. I didn't find anything funny in his words, but his monster team sure did.

"I said let's do this before we die of boredom. Your act sucks."

"No, no, no, that's not what you said, what did you say before your lame 'joke'?" The crowd roared at me. They thought I was kidding, I guess.

"I said get on with it, freak."

I shut my eyes and jammed my pinky in my left ear, hoping I didn't hear him right. "That word. I don't like that word."

"What? Freak?"

I cocked my head to the side, cringing. "Yeah. That one."

"Freak." He enunciated perfectly. And it really cheesed me off.

" All right!" I said clapping my hands together with new found inspiration. "You all want to hear a joke? Here's one.

"One day, someone decided to pick up a ball, run it across a large open field through a bunch of obstacles trying to get that same ball. How funny is that? What's wrong? No one's laughing? Okay, I state some more of the joke so you simple minded people can understand. Those guys created the most famous past time in sports history. No one realized that as they began playing this game, they started to change. The boys became rougher with the ball, the ball changed shape, and no one knew why they were quickly becoming not only the biggest guys, but also the dumbest people in high school and why were they playing with this ugly, oblong thing that always smelled funny. No one bothered to ask why though, until one day at practice after those players had been especially crude and not funny to some poor kid that was just trying to get through the day, those players had sheltered up in the locker rooms past the field and a well placed bomb put them all out of their misery. The poor kid you shoved into a trash can, finds this joke extremely funny, and will probably remind you all of it come near future."

I was laughing, but they didn't like that. I received the worst beating of my life. I don't like to own up to it, but that's what happened on the very day I was fired from my first job. That was the day I gave up stand-up comedy gigs. No more asking Santa for a brand new microphone that would make my voice sound better. Even I'm a little self conscious sometimes.

So I never went back to that place, except later when I decided to use an extra pipe-bomb that I found under my bed.

\m /.\m/

It was a couple years later when I first met a girl. Not the first time I met a girl, but the first time I liked a girl. Woman, actually. My first love. And I met her in a dark alley. The only time I was ever the hero.

Her name was Annabella, and boy was she beautiful.

I was walking down the street in my usual fashion. My dark coat hung loose around my shoulders, and I had my hands in my pockets around a grenade that I kept around for good luck. I'd had a crappy day at work, at the factory I'd been working at for almost four years. One bad day, and heaven appears before me in high heels.

I was walking down the street as I said previously, and I stopped at the opening to an alley. I thought I heard something, and I was kind of hoping it was Santa Clause so I could ask him why he didn't bring me that Uzi I asked for, for Christmas. It was almost February and I couldn't think of any reason why he would still be in town. Well, of course I didn't find Santa Clause, I found three men and the woman I would later call Anabella. They had her up against a wall, clutching her purse to her chest, terrified out of her mind. I watched as they neared her, obviously drunk and stumbling.

She spoke first, "Look whatever it is you want, you're not getting from me. Get out of my way." She sounded beautiful, even angry.

The man farthest to me said, "Well aren't you a piece of work. What shall we do with this one, Will?"

"Take what we can." His eyes widened. "And more."

She gasped as the man named Will jumped her, knocking her to the pavement. She clutched at something in her hand. I knew what it was even before she decided it was a good idea to cut the man's face. He yelled, and she got to her feet and ran…

Straight into me.

"Hello." I said, breathlessly. She pushed away from me and I assured her, "Wait, I'm helping."

She got behind me. I don't know why she trusted me at that moment, but I guess anything was better than the men after her.

"Hey!" A man yelled at me. It wasn't the one called Will. It was the biggest one, a man with shoulders so broad you could fit an eighteen wheeler full of little orphanages on their way to hell across them. "You have the balls to interrupt?"

"Yeah." I said. Short and sweet so he'd understand.

"Now, when I get through with you, there will be nothing left." He came at me, lumbering in a way that only the very aggressively drunk can lumber. I thought about just waiting till he was on me and moving out of the way so he'd smash his head against the brick wall behind me. But that would've been too easy. He shoved his fist into my stomach the same time I grabbed the back of his neck, forcing him to the ground. His weight and obvious state of…drunkenness, made him about as easy to maneuver as a ten ton vat of chemicals. I waited for him to get up. When it appeared he wasn't getting up, the guys that had joined him pulled out guns. They had them trained on me.

"Damn, guys, really? It was getting to be so much fun! I would hate to have to end it here." I said, thinking about the grenade in my pocket.

The man named Will jerked his chin toward the woman behind me. "She comes with us."

"I don't think so." I turned to see the woman standing there, with a gun that seemed too big to fit in her hands.

"Wow. That is a big gun. What kind of people do hang around?" I asked curiously.

"Bad ones." She responded. She said to the men, "Get out of here before I do something I'll regret."

"Like what exactly?" The man to the right of Will said. He seemed arrogant with a smile on his face. She smiled back at him, and she looked gorgeous behind that smile that promised evil. She lowered the gun a fraction, and fired. It seemed that big gun also made a very loud sound as well. The man's kneecap exploded. I grinned, looking back and forth between the men. One took off while Will waited, deciding whether or not it was a good idea to stick around. Common sense got the better of him apparently, and he leapt past the writhing man on the ground and disappeared around the corner.

I heard the safety on the gun click on and a sigh. I made an exasperated sound. "Big gun. Was NOT expecting that, miss…"

She eyed me curiously. "What are you doing back here? This alley is mainly used by drug dealers and scum like those guys. Why are you back here?"

"Why are YOU back here?"

"Shortcut."

"Yeah, right to hell."

"I can take care of myself, thank you."

"Obviously. Why do you carry around that thing?" I said pointing to the gun that would disappear back into a holster on her hip. "You a cop?"

"Not even close. I'm a librarian, but in this city, in this time, you've got to have something." I noticed a thin silver chain around her neck. Her open collar revealed a charm. An ace card.

"Do you like playing cards?"

"Me? No. My father did. Crazy old man. He died a long time ago. Cancer. But you don't care. You've got more important things to worry about."

"Like what?"

"Like the blood you're standing in."

I lifted my shoe. There in the light, a glint of red. Through further examination, I noticed a puddle forming around me. "Well, would you look at that."

"Do you always do this? Pretend to be a hero to the damsel in distress?"

"A simple thank you would suffice."

"I had it under control." There was silence after that. I didn't know what to say, she was too stubborn to break the silence first.

I cocked my head to the side and said, "Want to hear a joke?"

She stared at me as if she didn't know what planet I was from, which, by the way, I'm from earth, like everyone else alive. "Is it funny?"

"That's up to you to decide."

She shrugged, "Sure."

So I proceed to tell the joke. "A man and a giraffe walk into a bar. They order a couple pints and get blitzed out of their minds. The giraffe passes out on the floor and the man starts to walk out and the bartender says 'you can't leave that lyin' here' and the man turns around, looks down at the giraffe and says 'That's not a lion, that's a giraffe.'"

She smiled, chuckling. "That's good."

I laughed a little and say, "Want to hear another one?"

She nods and then joins me for dinner in a shabby little restaurant that also happens to make the best hot dogs around. It wasn't anything fancy, or whatever, but hello, here I am with the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen telling her the funniest jokes I know. And she was laughing like a goddess, and all I could think of was, 'wow, this one I might decide not to kill.'

"You seem to know exactly what to say when I start feeling down about what just happened."

"Well, laughter is the best medicine." I didn't tell her that I hadn't laughed like that for a long, long time. "The last time I laughed like this, I had just blown up a truck with ten pounds of explosives and all the forks I could find."

"Why forks?" she said, sipping on white wine. Beer was never her taste, and my taste was a little more…bitter.

I answered, "Well, I was hoping to get to know what it felt like to be stabbed by forks. A whole bunch at once."

I didn't catch her reaction, because I was distracted by a fat, jolly, looking man that had a large trash bag slung over his shoulder, and a huge white beard. I was distracted by Santa Claus. I got up and walked over to him. "Hello, Kringle."

He didn't look up. Annabella stared at me as I was speaking, not saying anything, but staring at me as if I had just long black hair held up a wooden box, and said, "My compass is unique."

The man finally looked up at me after standing there for a whole two minutes and four seconds. "Wad ya want, boy?"

"Well, sir, I saw you earlier this evening down an alley way where I met a beautiful young woman named Annabella and I wanted to thank you for bringing me an angel, sir."

"Keep standing there an' I'll bring you a load o' hurt, ya here me? Get on outta here, boy."

I was mortified. There in front of me, my idol, and he had just told me to get lost. I didn't get where I am today by being a good person. I said, "You want to see a trick?" I sat a fork up on its tip next to the man's coke. I didn't care that I might forever destroy Christmas at its core. I didn't care that I would obliterate the hopes and dreams and jobs of his little henchmen at the North Pole.

Something touched my shoulder. I turned, furious at being interrupted. It was Annabella. "Sorry, sir. Don't mind him, we were just leaving."

And she took me by the shoulders and steered me towards the door. "We're leaving? But I wasn't done with my fries!"

"We'll bring them with us."

"But I didn't leave a tip!"

By that time, we were out the door. She let me go and went to the car we arrived in. "Alright. Go leave it and then we leave, okay? Don't mess with that guy in there."

"Fine." I went inside. People began looking away, anywhere there might be something relatively interesting. That was the best way to tell that they were definitely watching. I caught one kid staring. I said to him, "Keep doing that and your eyes will blow up." I grinned when he kept staring at me. Fine. I told him. I went to the booth that we had eaten in and placed a large lapel flower, retrieved from my jacket pocket, on the seat and joined Annabella in the car.

\m/.\m/


	2. Chapter 2

Do you know what that sound is? That flapping sound above me? Hmm? Can you not hear it? Maybe you're crazy. Or deaf. Either way, you deserve to be in here more than I do. I haven't done anything wrong. I'm an expressive. I just…do. That's all. Once again, I just do things. Why do you… bats. That sound above me. Flapping of little wings. I knew I was being watched. The Batsie is watching me. Spying on me through his little minions. SHUT UP LITTLE SPAWN OF MY ENEMY!! He won't get to me. I refuse to be laughed at, Batsie.

To understand better why you need a personal computer, let's look at the pathetic mess you call your life.

\m/.\m/

"So did you leave a tip?" She asked immediately. I knew she thought I was lying, that I just wanted to shove a tooth pick up that guy's nose.

"I did leave a tip. They will enjoy this one even more."

"What did you do?"

It was an accusation. I shrugged and smiled innocently. I hadn't been innocent for years. I didn't say anything to her, though she knew I had done something wicked.

"I haven't known you, but for a couple of hours and you are growing on me, evil and all."

"Evil?" I laughed it off, but she seemed as serious as a plane crashing on a cookie cutter family home. Well, serious for normal people. "You don't know the meaning of the word."

"I do. You just have to be around the right people."

I looked into her face as she drove and wondered what she could possibly know about evil. Her full lipped mouth was set in serious lines and the way the shadows hit her, she looked like a scene from a cemetery, and trust me, I'd been in plenty. I asked, "What nefarious trouble have you gotten yourself into?"

She didn't look at me, but instead continued on down the road, driving at what seemed like a legal speed. From somewhere behind us, a loud boom sounded. Carnage flew past the windows. Glass and wood and concrete flew from the now destroyed diner. Anabella looked at me dubiously.

"Anabella, what have you been through to earn such an unhappy visage?" I asked smiling.

She gave me a sideways glance before saying, "What have you been through to make you hate people so much?"

"Touché. But I don't hate people. I hate their ideas." I waited a moment. "No, you're right. I hate people. But can you really blame me, I mean they're so…"

"Abominable? Disgusting? Cockroaches in the garden heap of society?"

I just stared at her. I had never met anyone who shared my opinions and ideals the way Anabella and I had on that night. I readjusted myself deeper into my seat, thinking about what she had said. Was she like me, slowly tipping over the edge of insanity? Not that I was crazy. I was the sanest person I knew. To be crazy would just make me question my own sanity. I said quickly, "You are one of a kind."

"There is plenty of my kind actually; too many to even distinguish between us all. It's so tiresome."

I laughed. "Yes, it is. Do you want to hear another joke?"

"Will it make me laugh?"

"I hope so. You have such a pretty smile." The comment just leapt out of my mouth, as if it was headed into battle with a sword-cane thrusting out in front of it, screaming 'CHARGE!!' at nothing in particular. I watching the comment battle the dust in the air for a moment before realizing, Anabella was staring at me as only a distracted person driving a vehicle and trying not to kill us can do.

"What?" I asked.

"The joke?"

"Oh, yeah. Right. Okay then. A police officer pulls a man over. He goes up to the guy's window and says, 'sir, I need you to take this breathalyzer test for me.' The man says 'I can't do that officer. If I blow into that, I'll get a really bad asthma attack and die.' The officer says 'okay then, I'll need you to come by the station and let us take a blood sample.' The man replies, 'I can't do that either. You see, I'm a hemophiliac and if you take my blood, I'll die.' The officer nods and says, 'I'll need a urine sample then.' The man shakes his head and says, 'Sorry, I can't do that, I have low blood sugar.' The officer says, 'Then I'll need you to come out here and walk this white line for me please.' The man says, 'I can't do that.' The officer asks why not and the man says, 'I'm too drunk for that.'"

Anabella chuckled. The sound of it made me smile as well. She said, "You don't have a bad smile, either, Jack. You should smile more."

I was captivated at that moment. It was as if I'd been waiting forever for the right person to come along and say, 'hey, people suck, let's go kill them off' and she'd just described every gruesome way one could imagine Rwandan torture methods with demonstrations by her own very skilled, very crafty, beautiful hands on an unwilling, unsuspecting crazy white man.

Was that weird?

"What are you thinking about?"

"You." I didn't lie. There was no point. People saw through it. I wasn't very good at it, you see, so I just stopped.

"Oh really? Just me?"

"Basically."

"What about me?" She raised her eyebrows in amusement. I knew that she was amused by the way her mouth was curved upward into a smile.

"How you would demonstrate Rwandan torture methods with your beautiful hands on a crazy white man."

She laughed once again. After that, we hit it off like a couple of crack heads nursing our addictions. No, not what you think. She was the flipside of my coin, the sun in my day, my everything. She moved in with me into what I called the Asylum. It was my little apartment on the riverfront where I dumped the bodies.  There was no furniture, except a mattress that we slept on and a little wooden box to keep the TV. We had late nights laughing, telling jokes. When she was ready to fall asleep, I would wrap her in my arms and sing quietly. When we woke up, she would head to the small kitchen and make coffee, then kiss me and say good morning.

I was so in love. I hadn't known what the word meant until then. I didn't know what else it could've been. She was my world, all I knew. When I didn't something, would it make her happy, should I pick up some flowers after work for her, what should I bring home for dinner tonight, do you need me to pick up ammo for your glock, can I give you a back rub, sweetie? It was almost an obsession to make her the happiest woman alive.

\m/.\m/

Christmas Day. I woke up with Anabella beside me, the best gift I could've ever asked for from the jolly obese man. She looked like an angel, with her blonde hair falling around her face, soft pink lips parted as she snored. I unwound my arms from her sleeping figure and made my way down the hallway of Anabella's apartment. The white familiar wall led me to the kitchen, where I began the hunt for a nice holiday breakfast. Ten minutes, a couple of calls to the fire department assuring them that everything was not fine, that I couldn't make my girlfriend a decent holiday meal, and a request to go out for breakfast, I gave up on the meal. I realized cooking wasn't as easy as I thought it was. In about ten minutes, I single-handedly destroyed Bella's kitchen and swore off homemade donuts for the rest of my life. So I sat down at the table and read the obituary column.

"What's wrong, Jack?"

I looked up to see Bella wrapped in a t-shirt at the edge of the hallway.

"Jesus is it safe to come in?" she took a long look at what I had done to the oven and counters. The floors had hole in them where a homemade concoction slipped through the glasses I had been using to make the dough.

"The fire department called. Your floors may be a little weak from the fire and they suggest you get me out to breakfast before I do any more damage to the structure of your apartment. Coffee?" I rose to my feet and greeted her with a kiss.

"Did you destroy my oven?"

I glanced at the charred remains and back again. "No I think it's fine."

"Then let me cook. Merry Christmas. And Santa's not in the closet. I checked." She said, smiling.

I looked at her dubiously. "He wouldn't be in the closet. He wouldn't fit. Did you check the bathtub though? He might try to hide."

"I will see him when I get in the shower. Now. What do you want for breakfast?"

"I don't eat breakfast. I was cooking for you. I don't eat until after the first run of my day."

She looked a little disappointed, so I said quickly, "But I can go out and make my runs and come back and eat with you."

She turned with a full face smile gracing her face. "Okay. Promise?" She held out her pinky so I could take it for the full promise, the whole shebang. She looked so innocent standing there , hair falling into her face, blue eyes trained on me, waiting for me to take her hand.

Instead I wrapped my arms around her and kissed her forehead. "Do you think I would leave?" I took her pinky and wrapped it in mine, then kissed her outstretched thumb, a motion we'd done before. She smiled beautifully and hopped around me to the stove and turned it on.

"Please be careful with that. It's like a dragon; it tries to eat people."

"I'll grab a sword and shield. Get dressed so you can come back quickly."

I did so. I had recently taken to wearing more blues. I didn't understand why until much later, but that is for later on in this story. So I wore a suit and tie, the one that Bella bought me for my birthday. Along with the deck of trick-out cards and the joke book that I still bother her with. Annabella was…indescribable. She was smart, funny, sexy, beautiful…. Everything I could ever dream of in a woman. The woman standing in the next room, wishing me a Merry Christmas, sleeping beside me so that I wouldn't have bad dreams, giving me the greatest moments of my life.

This was the woman for me. I knew it from the first moment I saw her shoot off a man's kneecap and cradle that huge gun of hers in her hand. From the first time she accepted me, made me level-headed, watched while I killed…

This was the woman I wanted to marry.

The moment I had thought this, my skin crawled. Not in a bad way, but in a way that was like decapitating babies, in a way that excited me, like blowing up an under-cover ice-cream truck that housed the minions of Santa's Army (hereafter known as SA^). It was a revelation that could not- would not- be ignored.

After I dressed, I hurried to the kitchen where Bella awaited. "Heading out now?"

I nodded quietly, thinking about what I'd just revealed to myself. Would she accept a proposal? Could I actually follow through? I could handle explosions and deaths and falling 300 feet through the air off a building. Women, though. A whole other playing card. A whole other instrument of destruction.

"Yeah. I'm headed out." I wrapped her in my arms and she kissed my cheek. "Bella…"

"Oh, Jack please don't use that tone of voice. You sound so serious."

I looked down at her as she smiled, watching her face fall as she looked at me. She said worriedly, "What's wrong, baby? Do I have to kill someone, because I'd rather do it while I'm out and about later getting groceries for this evening's dinner plans."

"As long as I don't cook." I said, motioning to the blackened appliances. "Even the toaster didn't make it out alive."

She chuckled, renewing my smile. "Thatta boy. Be back soon?"

"Promise." I wiggled my pinky at her once more and she took it and kissed me. As I headed for the door, she called to me, "Be safe."

As I fingered the gun in my pocket I assured her I would and left that little apartment.

I headed toward the back alleys of Gotham City, towards the cities most powerful, most ruthless of the bad guys. The Gotham City Mob bosses. Of course you didn't call them that being respectful. They were Gotham's wealthy, powerful, and dangerous. You had to be careful. And I'd been thrown to the sharks years ago. Carmine Falcone, the big boss, the head of the Falcone crime organization had a very special task for me, and if I'd failed, I was 'swimming with the sharks' as they call it. But I always do my job. Staying alive, killing for money. It was a hobby instead of a job. And I was good at it.

It was a little restaurant/bar that we met in when I had an appointment. He always ordered the steak burger off the menu with a coke and side of mashed potatoes. I ordered nothing. Carmine Falcone sat in front of me, relaxed, without a care while he ate his juicy burger and dipped his greasy, fat fingers in the potatoes. The sight of him almost made me gag.

"Now Jack. You know the routine. You bring these men to my own sense of judgment, and I pay you for your services. Now I don't like to brag on you to my buddies, but you're one hell of a catch, kid."

I didn't say a word. Didn't smile. Didn't offer a joke. He took a couple of gulps of the caffeinated drink of his and slid two envelopes to me. "Payment and the list of your next… clients. Don't disappoint me, boy."

I got up, pocketing the thick envelopes and started to leave. Carmine called me back.

"Hey, kid, I hear down at the office that you're one funny guy. Is that true?"

"I have my moments, sir. My own sense of humor."

"Tell me a joke."

I hesitated. The body guard next to me elbowed me to continue. I almost said no. I saved my humor for Annabella and my clients, or vics as I like to called them. Not for men like Falcone. But you didn't say no to the friggin' mob boss. It just wasn't an option. Not with ten guys around you to make sure you did what you're told. So I began with a joke.

"Yesterday, scientists revealed that beer contained small traces of female hormones. To prove their theory, they fed one hundred men twelve pints of beer and observed that 100% of them started talking nonsense and couldn't drive."

Falcone waited a minute, thinking that I wasn't done with the joke. Then his face lit up. "HA!" he started, smacking the table, laughing. "That's a good one! Tell me another!"

I was surprised by his reaction. I personally didn't see anything funny in the joke, just that it made fun of women and scientists. I shrugged. "Okay… I bet I can make you speak like a Red Indian."

He cocked his head to the side and said, "How?"

"See, I told you."

He chuckled. "You're one strange man, Jack. I like having you around."

"Is that so, Mr. Falcone?"

"Yes it is, Mr. Napier and I think it's time you and I talked about a raise in your pay."

I didn't want to accept anything extra from him. I was a coward, and didn't want to mess in the affairs of the mob. "I wouldn't dream of it, Carmine Falcone. I must take my leave. I have a beautiful woman at home awaiting my return. Happy hunting."

"Merry Christmas, Jack. We will talk again real soon."

I hoped to a higher power that wouldn't happen. I know it was strange, but I was afraid of that man. He had too much on his record for someone, even me to ignore.

But as it turns out, the mob pays considerably well these days. With crime soaring, money comes in real fast and while crime soars I get paid to take them down. I might've worked with the police if I didn't enjoy killing too much. I retrieved the pocket of money from my coat and looked inside. I knew how much was there. How much I had to spend for Christmas, maybe on something a little more traditional, maybe something more…

Maybe on something like a ring. I hurried down to the bus station, hoping to catch something that would take me to where I needed to go. And I'd decided.

While Annabella waited at home, I hopped the bus and hurried to the nearest jewelry store.

I'd decided. I would marry that woman with her big guns and perfect smile and charming attitude towards society. She was my other half, the flipside to my blackened coin.

I loved her.

That night after Christmas dinner while we were watching Bram Stoker's _Dracula_, I proposed. I paused the movie with a click of the remote and turned to face her. "Bella. There's something I have to say to you."

"Is everything okay, Jack?"

"It's more than okay, Bella. Everything's great. I've never been happier. I have something to ask you, Bella."

"Just spit it out then." She said lightly, smiling, encouraging me to continue.

I sat down on the floor in front of her, on one knee and retrieved the little box from my coat pocket.

"Annabella, you are the most amazing woman I've ever met in my life. You're beautiful, and strong and you love me for who and what I am, though both of those may be horrific and terrifyingly wrong."

She had her hand covering her mouth. She brought her knees to her chest and began to shake.

I continued, hoping all of this was a good sign. "You're brilliant and ruthless and to be honest, you scare me a little because women are hell on wheels if you ask me, but Bella, I love you. I am convinced that you are the perfect woman and that I want to spend the rest of my life with you." She made a small sound in the back of her throat as I opened the black velvet jewelry box and took her hand. "Will you-"

She jumped out of her seat at that moment, tackling me to the ground, crying. "Yes!" and sniffing and laughing. "I will marry you, you sadistic, evil, no good killing machine of destruction! And yes I will hunt Santa Clause and his little minions of evil with you!"

And that was the beginning of our new life.


End file.
